Technorati: intranet journal lotus notes

My latest for Intranet Journal came out last week and I forgot to mention it. It's called Enhance Your Lotus Skills on the Cheap and it covers three big user group meetings that are happening this summer: UKLUG, IAMLUG, and MWLUG. It outlines how you can get tons of killer training on Lotus products at these conferences generally by paying no more than travel and lodging. I also talk about how LotusUserGroup.org is a great way to find user groups in your area as well as a great virtual resource for Lotus info. So what are you waiting for? Go get signed up!

Myself? I'll see you in St. Louis at IAMLUG!

Permalink | Posted at 7:35 PM | Add/Read Comments (0) |          

Technorati: anniversary marriage

Today marks 14 years that I've been married to my wife. It's hard to describe how much I love this woman, but she's given me a companion, a lover, a friend, two beautiful daughters and happiness beyond words. I love you Jen, Happy Anniversary. And now, the chorus of a song I've loved for awhile (and is just now becoming popular) that makes me think of my wife every time. Come On Get Higher by Matt Nathanson:

so, come on get higher
loosen my lips
faith and desire
in the swing of your hips.
just pull me down hard
and drown me in love

Drown me in love indeed. And damn, the swing of those hips. Rawr!

Permalink | Posted at 10:21 AM | Add/Read Comments (5) |          

Technorati: PS3 Harmony Logitech Remote

I own, and love, my Logitech Harmony remote control. For those of you that are unfamiliar with Harmony remotes, here's a little explanation. Harmony remotes connect to your computer through a USB cable, and then your computer connects to a Harmony web application. In that application you tell it what devices you have (TV, Receiver, Blu-Ray player, Game system etc.) and then it downloads all of the codes for that device into your remote. You also set up Activities (Such as Watch TV, Play XBox) that control all of your systems functions. For example, when I press Watch TV, it turns on the TV, sets it to the TV input, turns on my Receiver, Turns it to the TV input and then makes sure the cable box is on.

So as you can see, the Harmony remotes rock pretty hard. You can take a non programmer and have a completely customized remote control within 15 minutes. Now the thing here is, the remote does Infrared (IR) remote codes. That's great for 90% of the things you want to run. But the Playstation 3 kinda screwed that up.

When the PS3 came out, Sony decided to forgo IR remote commands and instead make everything Bluetooth. What that meant for me was, I had a remote that controlled everything in my system except for my PS3. As I use my PS3 almost exclusively for Blu-Ray and DVD movies, that meant that every time I wanted to control a movie, I needed to use a game controller, or buy a bluetooth remote from Sony. This was annoying to say the least, but Logitech has finally come up with a good solution.

Logitech has released the Harmony Adapter for PS3. It's a small device that you plug into a power outlet, and then sit within view of your IR remote. All it does is accept IR commands for the PS3 and convert them into Bluetooth to control the PS3. You pair the adapter with the bluetooth on the PS3, and then you add the PS3 to your Harmony remote and are good to go. I used it all weekend long, and it worked flawlessly. Now I no longer have to switch remotes when doing PS3 stuff. And that's damn well worth the $60 in my opinion. If you have a Harmony and a PS3, this couldn't come more highly recommended!

Permalink | Posted at 10:30 AM | Add/Read Comments (0) |          

Technorati: lotus notes intranet journal replication backups

I believe that replication is, and always has been the strength of Lotus Notes and Domino. Nothing else has ever really been able to touch it. Because of this, you can get pretty creative with how you use it. In my latest article for Intranet Journal I talk about ways for Domino Administrators to augment their normal backups with replication. Give users local replicas of their mail files, make data redundant across servers, or even replicate backups to a central server. Basically I'm giving you a poor-mans way to back up your data. That said, the following from the article applies:

Now I'm not advocating this as your ONLY backup solution. That would be pretty reckless of me to do so with your data. So, here's the disclaimer. You should ALWAYS utilize good backup software that has agents specifically designed for backing up open Lotus Notes applications. This is essential to protecting your data. So do it, okay?

If you've ever run into data loss and you've had to wait for the "system" admins to get you your data back from tape, having some extra replicas might be a preferable alternative.

Permalink | Posted at 8:25 AM | Add/Read Comments (0) |          

Technorati: american idol kris allen adam lambert

I make no excuses, I love American Idol. I have since it first came on the scene 8 years ago. It's something I really enjoy and can watch with my children and talk about with anyone. I think it comes from the old performer in me. I tend to put myself in the contestants positions and enjoy living vicariously through them. I also tend to be thinking exactly what Simon is thinking, so his analysis is generally my sarcastic bad side with a British accent.

Anyway, this season, as I watched, I caught glimpses of this goth guy during Hollywood week who was unbelievable. We didn't really see much about him early on. They focused on other contestants, but after hearing him a couple of times I predicted he would win. He was that good.

Once we started moving through the weeks, it was evident that this guy, Adam Lambert, was head and shoulders better than his competition. His vocals were always amazing, he had a killer stage presence, a glam look, and could hit notes that no one else on the show could even dream of. Oh, and pictures surfaced of him kissing guys. So he was either gay or bi-sexual. *GASP*

One of the other favorites early on was Danny Gokey. Danny is a widower (something we were reminded of approximately five billion times) and could wail pretty well. He was also very religious, and was a music director for a church and had recorded some gospel music. He got a huge following, and for quite some time, everyone expected a Danny Gokey / Adam Lambert finale.

During this battle, a nice unassuming guy by the name of Kris Allen quietly put in great performance after great performance. He turned songs like 'She Works Hard for the Money,' 'Ain't No Sunshine' and even Kanye West's 'Heartless' into awesome acoustic/adult-alternative tracks. He could play guitar and piano, and on some tracks he did so without any help from the Idol band. Creatively he matched Adam Lambert and blew Danny Gokey out of the water. To me, he very much reminded me of Jason Mraz, one of my current faves. And in kind of an upset, he beat out Danny Gokey for the finals.

So now we had two genuinely nice guys, Adam and Kris, both very creative with arrangements and such with Adam having the better vocal ability, and Kris having the ability to play musical instruments. But Adam, vocally was still phenomenal and Kris could sometimes falter and not be able to push through soaring choruses. Adam also worked a stage like he owned the place, and Kris seemed kind of shell shocked at times to be there.

So to me, the American Idol victory should still go to Adam. He's the better singer and showman, and has been far more consistent all year long than Kris. But I think Kris will win. And the reason is simple. The Danny Gokey voting juggernaut, many of whom are deeply religious, will never vote for a gay man. So many of this huge voting contingent will go Kris Allen's way, and I think that will sway the victory for him.

If Adam actually wins, I will have a lot of faith in our country to have voted for the openly gay guy. But right now, I don't have that faith. Kris, although he's very good and deserves to be in the finale, wouldn't have quite the votes to win this, but I fear bigotry will push him over the edge.

I hope America proves me wrong.

Now make no mistake, both will get good recording contracts so it really doesn't matter that much in the grand scheme of things. And quite frankly I love both Kris and Adam and look forward to buying both of their albums. I just think that based on talent, most everyone agrees that Adam is the best. It would be a shame for him to lose simply because of his sexual orientation.

Permalink | Posted at 7:45 AM | Add/Read Comments (18) |          

Technorati: obama politics fox news



Wow. Fox News Channel cannot rag on Obama enough! If you trust what they are saying, US citizens cannot hate Obama and his socialist agenda enough, yet Obama's popularity remains fairly high. Hmmmm, funny how those things seem to contradict.

I don't think MSNBC is any better on the other side, but that is the problem for me. We have two networks that are zealots for political parties. It's laughable that Fox says they are fair and balanced, neither they or MSNBC are at all. All this does is divide the American people more, and quite frankly it's bullshit for NEWS organizations to act this way. News should report news, not spin it through their vast conservative or liberal filters...

Permalink | Posted at 1:06 PM | Add/Read Comments (11) |          

Technorati: ie8 html rendering lotus lotus notes

Okay, I'm sure this is old hat to some, but we just happened upon it, so I thought I'd share.

We recently had a power user here who upgraded his Internet Explorer to version 8. Once he did that, any email he opened in Lotus Notes 8.5 with HTML embedded would take 30-45 seconds to open before it would render. We looked around and found a lot of people having the same issue, and most of them were fixed simply be reverting the browser back to IE7. Well our user's computer would not uninstall IE8 for some reason, so he was stuck with it. So, there are two ways to use the Notes browser rather than the OS default. The first is a notes.ini parameter:

browserrenderdisable=1

The second is in Basic Notes Client Config under the Additional Options at the bottom:

Disable embedded browser for MIME mail

That option actually places that .ini setting into the notes.ini so you can accomplish it either way. I don't like the wording in the Additional Options though. Disable embedded browser to me means that it is disabling the browser embedded in Notes, not the OS browser. Anyway, you can read all about it in the IBM Technote.

Permalink | Posted at 3:30 PM | Add/Read Comments (5) |          

Technorati: cancer death loss weird al

I'm getting fucking tired of writing about Cancer. My good friend Amy's little sister, Lauren, died yesterday after a bout of colon cancer.

Laur was 30.

Yes, Laur was only 30 years young. A couple years ago she started getting sick, and they found out she had colon cancer. She fought it tooth and nail over the last couple of years. The family did everything they could, including experimental medical trials. In the end it just wasn't enough. Oh and get this: Amy's other sister is an oncologist. So her other sister chooses Oncology after her residency and then Laur gets sick. Let me be the first to say, fuck you irony.

The good thing is that Lauren and the family knew what was going on at all times because they had a doctor in the family. That definitely had to bring some comfort. Also, they knew that they really did all they could. If there was anything else they could have done, they would have. So I hope that brings them some peace, it really should.

I'd known Laur since my early college days. You see, Amy was my college roommate in my third year of college. I met her family then, including Lauren, and she may have only been in eighth grade. I saw her several other times. On visits to Amy and her family in Kansas City, at our college graduation, my wedding, when she visited us here in Chicago. In person, I may have been in the same area as Laur a dozen times, but she left an impact.

Everyone says nice things about people after they're dead, whether they were deserving or not, but I'm here to tell you that Lauren truly was the real deal. You would not meet a nicer, more smiley, more goofy person in your life. She was always that person that brought everyone else's spirit up. We also shared a bond over the love of Weird Al Yankovic. He was one of her favorite artists and it was completely fitting. So tonight I'm going to listen to some Weird Al in her honor. Join me if you can.

My deepest condolences go out to her parents, Amy and her sister, and all of the people who loved Laur. I am so sorry for your loss.

Cancer hasn't been kind to people I know, and people I care about. It is, and always has been a brutal disease without conscious. Isn't it time we kick it's ass? If you've ever been touched by cancer, please donate to cancer research when and if you can. Nothing will make me happier than to see this disease eradicated in our lifetime.

Permalink | Posted at 2:09 PM | Add/Read Comments (4) |          

Technorati: torture politics

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
We Don't Torture
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

All the conservatives are up in arms because the Obama regime released CIA memos that showed that America tortured prisoners. They aren't up in arms that Bush flat-out lied about it, and they aren't up in arms that we actually are barbaric enough to torture people. They are pissed that Obama released these documents to make Bush look bad. Really? Bush couldn't look much worse and this is just another in a huge laundry list of items. As per usual, the Daily Show nails it.

Permalink | Posted at 8:31 AM | Add/Read Comments (0) |          

Technorati: hp mediasmart ex487 windows home server whs

For the longest time, I backed up stuff in my house simply by copying files from computers to USB drives. I did it all manually and it was obviously a pain in the ass. I've always run servers at home for testing, but I never really used them as file servers as they were never big enough for RAID5 or anything like that. So, I've been wanting some network attached storage of some sort for awhile. I wanted file redundancy (RAID5 or similar), easy expansion and it had to be somewhat affordable. Here's my environment:

• 1 XP Home laptop
• 1 iMac 24"
• 1 Vista desktop (used as my Domino server)
• Sonos music distribution system
• I also wanted to back up my in-laws Vista laptop whenever I connected it to my network

I wanted to be able to back up the Windows boxes (maybe even the Mac), use it as a file server (with redundancy of files) serve up my music to Sonos, and stream stuff to my Xbox 360. Well, the HP MediaSmart EX487 completely fit the bill.

The EX487 is built on the Microsoft Windows Home Server platform. It's a server that's meant for up to ten user accounts in a person's home. It comes with four drive bays, and two of them are filled with 750GB drives. It doesn't use RAID, but rather it takes your important files and makes sure they are copied to two different drives. This allows for redundancy, but can be done more cheaply. I can add disks to the other two drive bays to expand storage, or I can also add via USB ports or eSata on the back of the machine. So down the road I can add additional storage rather easily.

The hardware also comes with gigabit ethernet and is headless. That means there is no mouse, keyboard or monitor connection. All you do is plug in your ethernet connection and turn it on. You then have to install software on your Windows or Mac in order to connect and manage the server.

After you install the software on Windows, you can connect to the admin application. It seems to be based on a customized version of terminal services, and thus you cannot manage the box from a Mac, which is a bit of a drawback. But if you have a Windows box, the connection is really easy. Once you login, you can configure all of the features of the box. You can set up file shares, backups, and media sharing. Let's look at backups first.

Backups for windows machines are taken on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. Daily backups are incremental, and weekly and monthly are full backups. You can also set how long you want to retain the backups in the system. These backups are full windows backups. So, if my wife's XP laptop's hard drive fails, all I have to do is install a new drive, boot up with the HP recovery disk, and the machine will be restored to where it was prior to the hard drive crash. You can do this backup on up to ten machines in your network, which should be enough for most 'home' users.

On the Mac side, the server can be used as your Time Machine target. So you can install the HP software on the Mac and then configure Time Machine to use the Windows Home Server. Now there is one caveat, and it's a big one. It's not full backup of the OS like you get with Time Machine on a USB drive. This means that if your Mac dies, you have to reinstall Leopard FIRST and then you can restore files from the server. So it's not rebuilding your Mac with all of the user accounts and everything already set up. That will be manual on your part AFTER you reinstall the OS. So to me, it's not quite good enough. I applaud MS for putting in the Time Machine support, and it might be enough for some users, but I want the full backup.

Another thing the box can do is act as file shares. There are defaults for Music, Pictures, Video, Software, Public, Mac, and individual user folders for each user. You can set those up to save files on multiple internal drives too. So everything is still redundant. One thing I've done was move my iTunes library from my Mac to the Music share.

Basically I told iTunes to move my library to the home server instead of the hard drive. It copied everything over and made all the references point to the server now. I still use iTunes like I always did before, but the music isn't local on my machine, it's on the server. This backs it up, makes it redundant, and it's available there for my Sonos to stream from. You can turn on the default music sharing, and you can even use the built-in Twonky Media server to serve it up to anything else on the network. For example Twonky Media can be seen by my XBox 360 AND my PS3, so I can stream to either of those or the Sonos. And now it's always available and I don't have to leave the Mac on all the time.

You can do the same thing with Pictures and Video. Putting files in those default shares makes them available if you have the sharing turned on. The server also has a media collection agent (Windows only for now) that will scan folders on your computer at set intervals and then copy any new files to the shares on the server. So, you could turn on the agent and tell it to watch a folder on your local hard drive, and any time you put new files in that folder, the server will copy them and make them available. It's a nice addition to the auto backups.

The server also has some additional capabilities around media that are nice. You can basically set up the server to stream music, photos and videos to the internet. You can turn on internet sharing and then set up a website where you can get to all of the media (and files) remotely from anywhere with an internet connection. So if you NEED remote access to your stuff, this is a great way to be able to do it. And in a nice twist, you can have your photos automatically uploaded to services like flickr and Facebook. So, you can turn on the capability and make sure everything is posted to those sites without lifting a finger. It's a very nice way to integrate with the cloud.

Your server can also backup up itself to the Amazon S3 storage service. The ability is built-in and you can set it up so all of your files are backed up to Amazon's service across the internet. So, you can always add that layer of extra protection if you need it. Of course the Amazon service is a little pricey, but if you want automatic offsite backup, it's really easy to do.

One last thing you can do is install Add-Ons to do all sorts of things. You can either do it as a sanctioned Add-On, or you can simply use a Terminal Services client to remote into the box and install a program locally. I know people that have done this with many things including PlayOn, the streaming software that allows Netflix and Hulu integration to the PS3 and Xbox. I haven't tried VMWare or Domino, although who knows, they may run just fine.

Needless to say, I love this box. It was inexpensive compared to full-on RAID-5 Terra Stations, and much more feature-rich than the Drobo. It's easy to upgrade capacity, backs up all my windows machines, acts as a file server, stores my music library, streams to my 360, PS3 and Sonos and allows me to reach everything remotely. I can even have it shut down automatically overnight and restart in the morning to save electricity. I don't think I could do better for the money.

I'll point to a few additional reviews here so you can get more info:

Carl Tyler: Drobo vs. Windows Home Server
MediaSmartServer.net Review: HP MediaSmart Server EX487
We Got Served: Hands On: MediaSmart Server EX487
Slash Gear HP MediaSmart EX487 Home Server Review

Permalink | Posted at 7:44 AM | Add/Read Comments (1) |